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Liza Lou, Kitchen, 1991-1996, beads, plaster, wood, and found objects, 96 × 132 × 168 inches. Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, gift of Peter Norton 2008.339a-x. © Liza Lou, image Tom Powel, courtesy the Artist and Whitney Museum of American Art.

Whitney Museum of American Art – VIRTUAL

Date:
Thursday, December 3, 2020
Time:
7:00 pm - 8:15 pm
Cost:
$15 Museum Members, $20 non-members
Tickets:
https://shop.ashevilleart.org/products/art-travels-whitney-museum-american-art

This program takes place via Zoom. Space is limited; to register, click here.

Until it’s safe to travel together for our popular Art Travels day, overnight, national, and international trips, we’re thrilled to launch virtual trips for armchair travelers each first Thursday evening! This month, we travel to the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, NY.

As the preeminent institution devoted to the art of the US, the Whitney presents the full range of 20th-century and contemporary American art, with a special focus on works by living artists. Innovation has been a hallmark of the Whitney since its beginnings. It was the first museum dedicated to the work of living American artists and the first New York museum to present a major exhibition of a video artist (Nam June Paik in 1982). Such important figures as Jasper Johns, Jay DeFeo, Glenn Ligon, Cindy Sherman, and Paul Thek were given their first comprehensive museum surveys at the Whitney. The Whitney has consistently purchased works within the year they were created, often well before the artists who created them became broadly recognized. Designed by architect Renzo Piano and situated between the High Line and the Hudson River, the Whitney’s current building vastly increases the Museum’s exhibition and programming space, providing the most expansive view ever of its unsurpassed collection of modern and contemporary American art.

For this virtual visit, the Whitney’s assistant curators Jennie Goldstein and Elisabeth Sherman introduce the museum, its collection, and building, then discuss Making Knowing: Craft in Art, 1950–2019. This exhibition foregrounds how visual artists have explored the materials, methods, and strategies of craft over the past seven decades. Some expand techniques with long histories such as weaving, sewing, or pottery, while others experiment with textiles, thread, clay, beads, and glass, among other media. Making Knowing provides new perspectives on subjects that have been central to artists including abstraction, popular culture, feminist and queer aesthetics, and recent explorations of identity and relationships to place. Together, the works demonstrate that craft-informed techniques of making carry their own kind of knowledge, one that is crucial to a more complete understanding of the history and potential of art. The exhibition includes over 80 works by more than 60 artists including Ruth Asawa, Eva Hesse, Mike Kelley, Liza Lou, Ree Morton, Howardena Pindell, Robert Rauschenberg, Elaine Reichek, and Lenore Tawney, as well as features new acquisitions by Shan Goshorn, Kahlil Robert Irving, Simone Leigh, Jordan Nassar, and Erin Jane Nelson.

Art Travels

The Museum offers a variety of excursions designed to enhance experiences with art. Art Travels is very popular, and trips often sell out quickly! For more information about upcoming trips, email learn@ashevilleart.org, or to be included on our Art Travels mailing list, click here.

Contact:
Asheville Art Museum
Phone:
828.253.3227
Venue:
Zoom
Website:
https://zoom.us/